Home At Last
In 1861 he married Sarah Ann Mason. From 1864 onwards, he worked as Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (effectively, he was the Secretary, since the senior post was occupied by a noble figurehead). He sold his personal Lepidoptera collection to Godman and Salvin and began to work mostly on beetles (cerambycids, carabids, and cicindelids). From 1868-9 and 1878 he was President of the Entomological Society of London. In 1871 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, and in 1881 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He died of bronchitis in 1892 (in modern terms, that may mean emphysema). A large part of his collections are in the Natural History Museum (see The Field, London, February 20, 1892). Specimens he collected went to the Natural History Museum and to private collectors; yet Bates still retained a huge reference collection and was often consulted on difficult identifications. This, and the disposal of the collection after his death, are mentioned in Edward Clodd Memories.
Read more about this topic: Henry Walter Bates
Famous quotes containing the words home at and/or home:
“Chrome: her pretty childface smooth as steel, with eyes that would have been at home at the bottom of some deep Atlantic trench, cold gray eyes that lived under terrible pressure. They say she cooked her own cancers for people who crossed her, rococo custom variations that took years to kill you.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-fixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)